Trace stared at his foster father as though he had completely lost his mind. It was one of those rare instances where the royal vizier couldn’t think of a single diplomatic thing to say. So, because this was his father, Trace went with his knee-jerk response.

      “Are you fucking kidding me?”

      “Ajai Trace,” Magnus warned him, even though they were in the privacy of his office. Respect was an issue that transcended soundproofing.

      “I am sorry, M’jan, but you just cut ten feet off of my guts.”

      “Well, now you know how I felt when you told me you had gotten Ashla pregnant out of wedlock,” Magnus returned dryly, shuffling aside some papers on his desk but not really seeing what they were. He had dreaded this conversation with his son exactly because of this reaction.

      For Trace, the remark about his wife was a low blow, albeit an accurate one. Shadowdweller tradition placed a great deal of shame on those who were thoughtless and sexually careless enough to create a child while having no plans to provide a sound home environment in which to raise it. But to be fair, in his case, there had been extremely extenuating circumstances.

      “M’jan, that is hardly fair,” he complained. “I didn’t even know she was real! And I was in the throes of Shadowscape euphoria at the time!”

      “Don’t argue with me, Trace, or I might have to remember that you broke the rules and had sex in the women’s dormitories knowing full well it was prohibited. You grew up here. You were practically born knowing it was against temple law. And don’t you still owe me penance for that?”

      “So, tell me why you decided to get a new handmaiden.” Trace altered the conversation quickly, his face flushed under his dark skin. “After what Karri did, I’m not sure I like the idea of a woman so close to you. Touching your food, responsible for your health and your battle gear?”

      “It isn’t as though I have a choice in these matters,” Magnus returned. He looked up and met his son’s darkly troubled gaze. “I am following Drenna’s wishes in this.”

      “Are you sure? Are you sure it’s not M’gnone fucking with you?”

      “Trace!” Magnus barked. “Do not speak His name aloud! Gods, what is wrong with you?”

      “Nothing.” Trace shrugged. Then, with sarcasm, “I guess after watching the last faithless whore you called a handmaiden poison you, my wife, and my unborn child nearly to death, I kind of have a few trust issues, okay?”

      Magnus sat back with a long sigh. “Tell me about it,” he muttered. The priest couldn’t help but remember, as he always did, how Karri had had the gall to poison him and then in the next breath attempt to seduce him while waiting for it to take effect. A small fact of the day his son was not privy to. But the emotional and physical enhancer she had chased her poison with, combined with decades of his hard-won discipline, had worked against her in the end.

      But to this very day he couldn’t see what his son had seen those moments before Trace’s blade had cut her throat. For two hundred years he had lived almost every single day at the side of a sweet-natured healer with the face and freckles of an innocent young girl. When he tried to conjure the vindictive and unfaithful harpy who had shouted private, personal information to his son, the Chancellors, and all their company, he simply couldn’t create what he needed.

      “On the other hand,” he said slowly to his son, “I could use an ally here. She is not what you might expect, and I don’t think anyone else will easily figure her out. Also, I cannot condemn her for another woman’s crimes. But being new to the temple, and to Sanctuary, she may be just the resource I need to find out once and for all who is behind the sedition I feel slithering through my house.”

      Trace watched his father scowl blackly, the thunderous look of anger almost painful to see. Magnus had been betrayed in the worst ways. Trace knew his father’s faith had been shaken to its very core, and he hated to see him this way. Despite his ruthlessness when hunting down Sinners, his father was a forgiving man who loved nothing more than to guide others to better lives through advice, penance, or teaching. Mostly teaching. Trace might have wondered why Magnus had aspired to such a high administrative position when it was clear he wanted to mold the youth of their species more than anything, except he knew his father had a driving need to control those gifts from a level where he would make the most powerful impact. It wasn’t about making himself happy.

      It had always been about the care of others over the care of himself. Until recently, he had followed his faith and allowed the woman assigned to him to care for him wherever needed. How hard it must be for him, to be filled with such doubt now. Was he questioning everything he stood for, as he stood there and watched pieces of it decaying out from under him? Trace hoped not. He prayed his father saw quite clearly that the body was sound, that it was only the virus that needed to be destroyed before any more damage could be done.

      He wished he could do more to help, but Sanctuary was no longer his home, and he had heavy responsibilities awaiting him elsewhere. He had a family being created; a government to guide as it, too, fought the disease of corruption; and very dear friends who were in just as much turmoil as his father was, which brought him to the original purpose of his visit.

      “I heard Tristan came to see you,” he said casually, although he knew his father would never buy the uninterested act. “He is not the religious one between the twins.”

      “He is not devout as Chancellor Malaya is, no,” Magnus agreed. “That doesn’t mean he does not have faith.”

      “Yes, but…” Trace frowned, knowing how infantile he was going to sound no matter how he put this. Magnus was his father, after all, and he knew him far too well. “You wouldn’t care to tell me what he felt you could provide for him that I, his vizier, could not, would you?”

      Hmm. Jealousy? From his son? Magnus was almost amused at the petulance edging Trace’s tone, except he knew the vizier was a supremely confident man who had suffered many difficult trials as he had helped the current regime reach its place of security. Taking that into consideration along with the strange visit from Chancellor Tristan earlier that day, he began to get a sense of the troubles in the upper government that had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with people just being people.

      “Now, you know that anything Tristan says to me in temple remains in confidence.”

      “Drenna! M’jan, I can’t accept that!”

      Trace lurched to his feet and began to pace, not realizing and clearly not caring when the painstakingly crafted wooden scabbard of his new katana smacked hard against the chair he had abandoned. On principle Magnus should have laid into him for that, but he forgave him when he saw how agitated he really was. His son’s well-being would always be more important to him than the gifts he had given him.

      “You know you have to, otherwise you wouldn’t be so angry. And you knew what I was going to say.” Magnus rose to his feet and rounded his desk, stopping to lean back against it as he watched Trace pace. “So it begs the question, ‘Why did you come here’?”

      His son frowned, stopping still and running a hand through his short black hair. He had never liked to wear it in the long tradition as so many men did. The quirk made Magnus smile softly.

      “Is it Tristan’s behavior that is really bothering you? Or perhaps you are finding your new life as a husband and father-to-be more stressful than expected?”